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U.S. State Department on the restrictions of religious freedom in R. Macedonia

29. Октобар 2009 - 9:32

On 26th October, the U.S. State Department published its
Religious Freedom Report 2009 for Macedonia. A significant part of the
Report is dedicated exactly to the restrictions of the religious
freedom that the Government of R. Macedonia is imposing upon the
Archbishop of Ohrid and Metropolitan of Skopje Jovan and the Orthodox
Ohrid Archbishopric.

As the State Department points out,
one of the restrictions is "the lack of effective implementation of the
registration portion of the 2007 legal status law". This restriction
"severely hindered new registrants' ability to acquire legal standing."

In
the Report it is stressed that "Skopje Court II assigned the
registration process to a single judge, who did not meet the timelines
required by the law, leaving many applicants waiting months without
information. The judge in charge and the president of the court also
stated that they would seek to ensure that sources of teaching and
liturgy for new registrants are different from those of existing
registrants, seemingly intending to protect the autonomy of
already-registered groups and contrary to the spirit of the law."

The
U.S. State Department also accents the following: "During the reporting
period, the court approved two new applicants, and rejected or did not
act on applications from 11 religious communities. Some restrictions
related to its status as an unregistered group continued to be applied
to the ‘Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid', which denies the MOC's
self-declared autocephaly (also not recognized by other Orthodox
churches). "

In the report it is indicated that the
Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric is lead by the Archbishop Jovan and is
recognized as an Archbishopric by the Serbian Orthodox Church. It is
emphasized also that "members of the group claimed undue government
monitoring or harassment based on their religious beliefs. On July 23,
2008, and February 9-10, 2009, church members reported delays at border
crossings into the country and indicated that border guards told them
they should take off their monastic clothes in order to facilitate
border crossing."

The report points out that "state support
for construction of houses of worship and other religious buildings
favored the dominant Orthodox religious community."

The
U.S. State Department draws attention to the fact that the government
refuse to return the passport to Archbishop Jovan and that he "faced a
detainment order for a third retrial of a case in which he was
initially acquitted by the Veles Trial Court in 2006."

The
State Department indicates that Archbishop Jovan's lawyer has not yet
received the opinion requested from the expert panel in regard to the
trial. The report was finished before the convicting verdict for the
Archbishop Jovan was pronounced.

As a constitutive part of
the Report, the following is also included: "Embassy officials
discussed the implementation of the 2007 legal status law with the
court in charge of registrations and with government and religious
leaders on numerous occasions, advocating for implementation of the law
in a way that meets international standards with respect to human
rights and religious freedom and meets the deadlines contained in the
law. Embassy staff also worked closely with a number of religious
groups and communities seeking to register, serving as a central point
for information-sharing among applicants frustrated by court delays and
confused by the lack of clear application procedures."

From
the Report of the U.S. State Department, it can be clearly seen that R.
Macedonia is far from the implementation of the Law for Churches,
Religious Communities and Religious groups, hence, it is far from the
fulfilling the international standards in regard to the respect of
human rights and religious freedoms.

By the state
persecution against the Archbishop Jovan and the refusal of the
application for registration of the Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric, the
Government of R. Macedonia is protecting the monopoly of the schismatic
MOC, thus creating tensions which do not go in favor of the R.
Macedonia's ambitions for integration in the Euro-Atlantic civilization
flows.